Facing Eden

the long version

The San Francisco Bay Area boasts one of the richest and most consistent traditions of landscape art in the entire country. Looking back over the past one hundred years, the contributors to this in-depth survey consider the diverse range of artists who have been influenced by the region's compelling unions of water and land, peaks and valleys, and ever-changing fog and mist-filtered light. All manner of visual representation appear in this book: painting, sculpture, graphic art, photography, landscape architecture, earthwork, conceptual art, and city planning and architectural design. Over two hundred works of art are discussed, and many well known artists and designers are represented, from Bernard Maybeck, Diego Rivera, Dorothea Lange, and Ansel Adams to Richard Diebenkorn, Joan Brown, Lawrence Halprin, and Christo. The essays explore key themes in the Bay Area's landscape art tradition: trends linking that tradition to work from different regions, its worldwide influence, connections between the visual arts and the region's potent preservationist movements, and the fragile balance between the cultural and the natural. Equally important are the many ethnic perspectives that have played an essential role in Bay Area art.